Three first-semester students, one task to develop an animated short film and immense ambition – that’s where the first steps of “No One’s Light” headed off from in autumn 2024. Over the next 12 months, another animated first-year film at HFF München came to life, helping us VFX students develop filmmaking skills hands-on.

by Michael Powers, Christoph Schmidt, Julia Zenk

Finding an idea

The first step in creating our animated movie was to develop a story and concepts. The freedom to create a fully animated short film opened up limitless possibilities in the visuals, so we already knew we wanted to stick with genres that take advantage of this: fantasy and science fiction. Together, we gathered about 50 possible ideas, ranging from time travel to epic worlds of dragons and aliens. But amongst those, one story particularly stood out above the rest for us: an interstellar worker exploring a planet that comes to life at night.

We started this project with an ambitious approach. Ideas ranged from the main character initially encountering numerous alien offspring and their mother, to setting up a giant main base for the corporation our main character is working for. Lots and lots of characters, assets and settings. We began asking ourselves whether all these elements were necessary for our plot and whether we could find a more efficient way to tell a story.

With the help of our lecturers, Prof. Jürgen Schopper, Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira, and Berter Orpak, we worked to reduce the number of characters and places while keeping the most important plot elements for a concise story. This helped us to focus on learning new skills within an efficient framework. Especially because it needed to be simple and easy to understand within 5 minutes. Eventually, we figured out the only three components we needed for the story to work: an astronaut on a mission, an alien baby creature, and intergalactic planet landscapes. That way, we had more time to focus on the next steps while still following a solid story flow. During this stage, our producer Leonhard Schmid, who is currently studying production at HFF München, hopped on board to support us with administrative tasks.

A world, far, far away

Creating a fantastic world with original characters, while all fitting together in one look was a major task we were facing. First up, the planet – the environment our whole story is set in. How could we create otherworldly landscapes that are distinct from a familiar earthly look? Our main inspiration was underwater landscapes, such as coral reefs and deep-sea creatures, environments that fit well with science fiction designs.

This way, we could give our planet a distinctly otherworldly appearance, centred around bioluminescence as the core aesthetic. Flowers and creatures glow in the dark, bringing the planet to life at night and reinforcing its alien nature.

The main plant that incubates the alien eggs was particularly difficult to find. It needed to read clearly as a plant while avoiding any direct resemblance to recognisable Earth species. At the same time, we wanted to prevent the design from immediately revealing that the “fruit” inside it was actually a living creature. The smaller plants that grow from falling seeds were not modelled; instead, they were created in Blender’s geo nodes, allowing us to easily fill the landscape with them.

The geo nodes system for the plants consists of multiple stages. These are the spores, seeds, which are not seen, and the plants themselves. For organisational purposes, each stage is a separate object containing the node tree. Control groups were used to make, for example, the planet’s surface easily available across multiple node trees and smoothly exchange data between stages.

The spores are emitted in a spherical volume around the creature and are simulated with a simple constant downward velocity and some noise. Once the distance between a particle and the ground gets sufficiently small, it stops moving and stores the elapsed time in frames since it hit the ground.

In the next stage, points are distributed across the ground. Through proximity to certain control meshes, the density is art-directable. As a next step, all spores that hit the ground are brought in. Then invisible growing spheres are instanced and realised on those points, with their size corresponding to the elapsed time since the particle hit the ground. In a simulation zone, the seed points are set to “activate growth” (growthTrue) if they are in a certain range of the expanding spheres. If a seed’s growth has been activated, the growth factor will begin to accumulate.

In the last stage, curves with random length are instanced on the seed points. They are displaced such that the curve tangent points in the normal direction of the planet’s surface near the root and points straight up near the tip. After that animated noise is applied, and the curves are trimmed based on the growth factor. Finally, data such as the spline factor and a random float for each plant are stored for use in the Material.

Although variation in length and thickness is evident in the plants, they do look quite similar. So to avoid the image feeling cluttered and noisy, especially in the wide landscape shot, we made use of a shallow depth of field, rendered in engine, as well as shifting the hue and brightness of further away plants slightly. This way, the overgrown bioluminescent aesthetic was maintained while keeping the image readable.

Another challenge was designing the main character, Aamu. Here, we were faced with some unexpectedly tricky questions: What kind of helmet should she wear? Should she wear one at all? Should she be able to take it off? Will the environment reflect in her visor?

Each of these decisions influenced not only her final appearance, but also the types of scenes we could realistically include in the film. We put a lot of emphasis on Aamu’s design, as she appears in the majority of shots and thus carries a lot of visual weight in the film. Regarding the latter of the questions above, in the end, we even made use of the reflective visor as an active element of our storytelling (see image)

Tied closely to the astronaut’s role in the story was the canister she used to collect the eggs. Early designs featured a large spike that would impale the targets. Given that it is later revealed that these eggs contain living animals, we deemed this approach a little too violent and opted for a grabber-style design instead. To further emphasise the corporate nature of the energy-collecting company behind the mission, we deliberately branded both the canister and the astronaut’s suit with the company’s logo.

The alien creature’s design was closely tied to the plant it originated from. We wanted this relationship to be immediately understandable to the audience, which led to the idea of having the creature carry its own egg as part of its body. In keeping with our underwater concept, the main inspirations here were crabs, moths, and other insects.

Kicking off the plot

Before we began actively working on our film, we did not forget an important foundation for the project: organising all the shots and assets to ensure an overview of every task at all times. Our VFX production professor, Sinje Gebauer, shared valuable insights from the VFX industry and tips on structuring the project in the pipeline database, Flow. This helped us immensely in keeping track of all the versions and noting down feedback.

In conjunction with Flow, we used Prism as our main pipeline tool for folder organisation and file versioning. The default file structure, previously set up by our Pipeline TDs Jonas Kluger and Wilfried Pollan, met our file management needs. Closer towards the end of the project, we manually added folders for handovers to sound, grading and mastering.

Throughout the visualisation of the story, we worked closely with our lecturers and test audiences to make iterations. We wanted to leave the story’s ending a little open, letting the audience interpret what might happen to the astronaut after her decision to delete the planet from the database.

Before we could begin animating the astronaut and the alien, we first had to create a rig – a skeleton underneath the model that allows us to move the character. For all our character rigs, we used the Blender Tool CloudRig, which was developed by Demeter Dzadik and introduced to us by him. The surfaces were painted using Substance Painter.

For the astronaut main character, it was important to have a smooth IK/FK switch given her frequent interactions with her container-harvesting tool. This was most important when she inserts it into the storage space. CloudRig helped a lot, as it comes with a very reliable, user-friendly system for IK/FK switching.

When it comes to our alien creature, it is mostly moving around by flying. For the flapping of the wings we used the sine wave generator in the f-curve modifiers in Blender.

Since we had the constraint of a 12-month student production, we could not spend ages refining the animation, which is why, on some shots, we skipped blockout with constant interpolation and jumped straight into splining.

As our team consists of passionate animators, we decided to animate every character manually with keyframes. Nevertheless, credible movements were highly important to us, so we hired professional actress Franzi Frey to reenact all stages of our main character’s journey for animation references. With the help of our lecturer David Emmenlauer, we also ventured in motion capture technology by XSense and recording movements, in case of needing to rely on those as a fall-back option.

Additional sessions with our animation lecturer, Prof. Melanie Beisswenger, improved our shots immensely with valuable feedback on what our characters are moved by, how they would express their emotions, and what credible movements are in each situation. All these steps helped us learn to apply the principles of animation in 3D software.

Compositing & Finishing

While most of our 3D work up until this point was done in Blender, one of the last steps in our pipeline – compositing – was happening in Nuke. Martin Tallosy introduced us to the program with industry expertise. In the compositing stage, we adapted all scenes to match a consistent appearance and added final touches for a cinematic look. The in-house grading in HFF München polished the final look of our film, thanks to Claudia Fuchs.

We rendered several passes out of Blender for use in Nuke. In addition to the ZDepth, position, diffuse and glossy light and colour, emission, environment, and ambient occlusion were included in the .exr sequences. This made the image sequences’ file size quite large, but allowed us a lot of control in compositing. Especially, the ZDepth was used on multiple occasions for depth of field. Furthermore, a combination of ZDepth and the Z component of the position gave a very nice, convincing impression of lingering mist.

We used ACES for rendering and compositing to ensure consistency across the final stages. In compositing, we always rendered mattes for the character and creature. Almost no colour correction was done in comp.

Issues in grading mainly stemmed from us discovering technical issues with the render. While working on the film in a fully lit room, we spotted a couple of errors (such as flickering or corrupted geometry), as soon as we saw it on a big cinema screen in the dark in-house grading room for the first time. This resulted in a couple of iteration loops until we could use the final renders for grading.

During the final grading sessions, Claudia contributed significantly to the film’s visual success. She showed us how the story could be emphasised greatly with colour, emphasising stark reds and oranges associated with the corporation and contrasting them with the cool teals and blues of the planet. Furthermore, she ensured those colour statements were consistent across all the shots.

While movies contain a lot of work for the final images, we also need to mention our supporting team, which contributed to the audio and thus, brought a final touch to make our story come alive.

Our music was written by composer Fabiola Wörter, a recent graduate of the University of Music and Theatre, who added to the otherworldly feeling with a captivating soundtrack. The whole score carries the story and pushes the audience even deeper into an otherworldly adventure. Our sound design was created by Stefan Möhl of HFF München, who helped us find the right sounds for an alien planet. Who would have guessed that small aliens sound exactly like capuchin monkeys?

Final Thoughts

All in all, we are very happy with our journey that created “No One’s Light” – we learned to work efficiently within a team structure, acquired a new skill set at each stage, and now have a short film to show for it. As our main character Aamu finds out the strength of personal choice and the beauty within the unknown, we hope to inspire many viewers of our film!

The film is now in submission for several festivals and events, with pending responses. Once there is an update, we are happy to share upcoming screening dates on our film’s Instagram account.

The full Team of “No Ones Light”

Script · Concept Art · Modelling   Texturing ·  Rigging ·  Animation · Compositing	Michael Powers Christoph Schmidt   Julia Zenk
Producer	Leonhard Schmid
Music	Fabiola Wörter
Voice & Reference Acting Aamu	Franzi Frey
Project Supervision	Prof. Jürgen Schopper
Project Consultant	Dr. Rodolfo Anes Silveira
VFX Producing Supervisor	Prof. Sinje Gebauer
Visual Effects Pipeline TD	Jonas Kluger   Wilfried Pollan
Mentor 3D Animation	Berter Orpak
Mentor Compositing	Martin Tallosy
Line Producer	Ina Mikkat
Team Assistant to Line Producer	Ron Sikkes
Team Assistant	Petra Hereth
Editing Consultant	Prof. Beatrice Babin  Prof. Michael Palm  Yuval Tzafrir
Color Grading	Claudia Fuchs
Rerecording Mixer & Sound Designer	Stefan Möhl
Postproduction Supervisor	Christoffer Kempel
Scheduling	Beate Bialas  Sabina Kannewischer
Editing Support	Christine Schorr  Yuval Tzafrir
Technical Support	Benedikt Geß  Florian Schneeweiß
Rental HFF Munich	Rainer Christoph  Boris Levine
Studio Management	Peter Gottschall  Andreas Beckert
Conforming	Aaron Kuder
Tutors	Prof. Melanie Beisswenger, Prof. Michael Coldewey, Demeter Dzadik, David Emmenlauer, Kathrin Hawelka, Benc Orpak, Dr. Walter Stehling

The post On a Mission: Creating “NO ONE’S LIGHT” first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München (HFF Munich) is one of Germany’s leading film schools, offering specialised programmes in directing, production, cinematography, screenwriting, and visual effects. Infinity Hotel is a surrealist short film produced by the school’s VFX students, Vanessa Chu, Vanessa Ramovic, Jim Obmann, Emil Pogolski, Sonja Latussek, and Elena Rid, in collaboration with the departments of Screenwriting and Production. Directed by Professor Matthias Zentner, and supported by Prof. Jürgen Schopper, Prof. Sinje Gebauer and Dr. Rodolfo Anes Silveira, the project combines live-action cinematography, 3D scanning, and digital environments.

A production report by the Students

Written by Vanessa Ramovic, Jim Obmann,
Sonja Latussek, Elena Rid, Emil Pogolski and Vanessa Chu.

After completing our first animated short films as visual effects students at the University of Television and Film Munich, we selected our next joint film project. The basic idea of INFINITY HOTEL, written by students Michael Schwärzler and Jakob Smolinski, immediately suggested weaving reality and surrealism together. Themes such as inner fears and memories accompany our protagonist, Clarence, an insurance salesman travelling from hotel to hotel. He enters a strange hotel room and quickly realises that something about this Infinity Hotel cannot be right. He not only wanders through twisting corridors and distorted staircases, but also through fragments of his own memories, confronting them.

INFINITY HOTEL is a collaborative film project between the VFX students and the screenwriting and production departments at HFF Munich. Directed by Professor Matthias Zentner, the film gave us the opportunity to contribute to many parts of the production process and to realise a story that would hardly exist without visual effects.

Our experiences from the animated short films WOODLAND and LITTLE STAR, created in the first year of study, helped us build on existing knowledge while acquiring new expertise. Unlike full CGI animated short films, the main challenge this time was producing photorealistic assets and shots for a live-action film. The following article reflects on our experiences during production and outlines how the visual effects of INFINITY HOTEL were created.

Concept & Painting!

In the early stages of script development, we explored the visual identity of the mysterious Infinity Hotel. The VFX students designed the protagonist’s childhood living room, the hotel corridors and colour palettes, and created initial storyboard elements for planned VFX sequences. A concept art seminar with Luis Guggenberger encouraged us to give free rein to our imagination and broaden our creative horizons.

Paintings play a central role in the film. Early in production, we gained valuable insight into the work of the production design department through collaboration with Eva Maria Stiebler, who printed our digitally designed paintings onto canvas and brought them to life. Vanessa Ramovic, Vanessa Chu and Emil Pogolski created the paintings that Clarence observes before entering the ominous hotel room.

Each painting exists in two versions, each representing a fragmented glimpse into his memories or dreams. One version might show young Clarence playing with a toy rocket or receiving his stuffed snail from his mother. The second versions depict distorted pasts and desires, such as the boy as a real astronaut, abstracted with a snail shell instead of a head, or alone and silent in his childhood living room without his mother. The paintings act as clues to the character’s past. Four works were digitally painted in Procreate and printed on large canvases by Eva Maria Stiebler, framed in wood for the set. Two additional paintings were created as charcoal drawings on paper.

Comics!

The comic books lying on the hotel room table were illustrated by Vanessa Ramovic and depict the adventurous “Cosmic Knight” Clarence’s childhood hero and career role model. Sonja Latussek animated the Cosmic cartoon shown on the small CRT television behind Clarence using the drawing and animation software Krita. She aligned the hero’s origin story with the comic books and portrayed his journey into space. Each frame was drawn individually, giving the cartoon its distinctive two-dimensional charm. In collaboration with production design, the animation was played back on the television on set.

The Endless Spiral

From the start of pre-production, we aimed to visualise Clarence’s inner emotional state. The red spiral staircase at our second Munich location provided an ideal opportunity to depict his descent into memory. Since the physical set could not accommodate infinite depth, Vanessa and Jim digitally extended the staircase. They captured a 360-degree FARO LiDAR scan of the stairwell, converting the spatial data into a 3D environment.

It was striking to see how precisely the point clouds generated by Faro Scene replicated the physical world. The resulting model was adjusted and extracted in Blender, where Vanessa and Jim animated the structure. The deformation of the staircase was particularly complex and was achieved using a geometry node system in Blender. Vanessa recreated the staircase texture in Substance Painter, based on reference photos taken on location by the entire VFX team.

The final compositing step involved integrating the digital staircase into the original footage. With guidance from lecturer Martin Tallosy, Vanessa learned how to use rotoscoping in Nuke to create nearly invisible transitions between plate and CG elements. Martin supported the integration of CG footage into all VFX shots and helped with initial colour adjustments. Lecturer Ando Avila taught us to track handheld camera movement using 3D Equalizer, enabling Vanessa and Jim to transfer the motion to the digital 3D model. Working closely with our instructors allowed us to explore new tools and combine traditional sets with digital visual effects.

The particular challenge with the spiral staircase was that the real staircase on set did not have a perfect circular shape. This required us to develop a believable transition from the set staircase into our circular CG spiral staircase that extends into depth. It was also meant to feel less steep and cramped than the real-world reference. Another challenge lay in the angles of the steps. On the real staircase, the steps were not perpendicular to the circle’s tangent at their respective positions, but instead met the circular form at a slightly offset angle. For the set extension, however, we wanted an aesthetic solution that would integrate more harmoniously into the staircase. Our goal was therefore to build a transition in which the skewed angles of the set staircase would gradually evolve into the perfect roundness of the digital staircase. We opted for a smooth progression: the closer one gets to the real staircase, the more angled the steps become, while further down they eventually align perfectly perpendicular to the respective circle tangent. This created a flowing transition between the physical and the digital staircase.

Vanessa Chu found it particularly challenging to implement the staircase in perspective in a way that felt believable while simultaneously conveying an endless depth. Normally, depth is not perceived very clearly in spiral staircases. However, in order to tell the story that this staircase extends infinitely, we had to work with tilted CG spiral staircases. Vanessa Chu and Jim Obmann therefore searched for a method to display the 3D model at an angle and stretch it in depth without introducing errors in the geometry.

By the time the iterations and feedback from Jürgen and Matthias were incorporated, the basic animation workflow had already been established. The professors’ feedback therefore focused primarily on lighting conditions and the intensity of the animation. Jim developed a workaround using a geometry node system and found a solution that allowed the staircase to be stretched in depth. Physically, this staircase is not correct, but for our visual storytelling this approach worked very well. At this point, physics was deliberately bent a little in order to convey the desired impression of infinite depth.

An Elevator Ride into the Psyche

The elevator was symbolically conceived in the script as a vehicle transporting Clarence through different layers of memory. In winter 2024, Emil previsualised the first elevator scenes, experimenting with lighting and composition to send the elevator into a threatening depth populated by oversized snails.

After Vanessa developed the elevator design through multiple concept drawings, collaboration with production designer Eva Maria Stiebler became essential. While the elevator appeared as a 3D object in full CG shots, it was also built physically in the HFF film studio. Digital concepts and real-world patination informed each other, as Vanessa’s designs guided the construction, which in turn defined the dimensions for Emil’s 3D model.

Sonja Latussek supported the team with detailed textures, giving the elevator a realistic appearance. She also carefully textured small debris objects placed on the elevator roof. Once models were finalised, Emil and Vanessa developed the layout for three full CG shots, stacking snail shells in front of a dark background. Elevator chain swings and dangerous pendulum movements were animated by Vanessa. In consultation with director Matthias Zentner and Professor Jürgen Schopper, Emil built the lighting setup, handled compositing, and fine-tuned lighting digitally.

A central task was the transfer of Vanessa Ramovic’s concept drawings into a precise 3D model. A key aspect of this work was creating a coherent connection between the set construction and the digital elevator. To ensure this, particular attention was paid to a dimensionally accurate approach. In retrospect, Emil Pogolski and Vanessa Ramovic would primarily invest more time in texturing and look development. They would also carry out tests under the actual lighting conditions of the shots at an earlier stage, in order to better align materiality and mood.

To integrate the realistic elevator into the surreal environment, Jim inserted real footage of the actors inside the physical elevator into the digital model opening. Emil added digital dust particles to intensify the ominous abyss and blend live-action and CGI seamlessly.

The Distoring Corridor

Another highlight was the hotel corridor that begins to warp and distort. After Vanessa Chu and Elena Rid created initial concepts, Jim modelled the corridor based on a long basement room at the location, captured via FARO LiDAR scanning and photogrammetry. Since the corridor needed to deform dynamically, Jim tested various geometry node systems to allow distortion at arbitrary points.

Simulating an infinite corridor directly would overwhelm most computers, so Jim devised a trick by scaling the corridor into depth. Viewed through Blender’s camera, the corridor appears endless. He developed a setup allowing control over both roll axis and depth movement. This resulted in a 50-metre corridor segment that, when scaled, created the illusion of infinity. Within this segment, movement allowed the corridor to emerge and disappear into depth.

Each light element within the segment could be controlled individually, enabling transitions from white light to threatening red flames that visually pursued Clarence. It was essential to integrate these light sources with the original plate.

Lighting movement on set had to be transferred to the 3D world and synchronised with the treadmill speed on which the protagonist ran. Once physical conditions were translated into Blender, the composite could function correctly. Jim also handled greenscreen keying and camera tracking, removing the original background and inserting Clarence into the rendered 3D corridor.

The Snail and why it should be feared

The gigantic snail shell threatening to pull Clarence into his dark past was a central element of the film. Elena Rid began sketching snail concepts before the story was fully defined. Inspired by horror films such as I Saw the TV Glow, the snail was designed to feel out of place, like a relic from another world. It represented a mutated version of Clarence’s childhood plush snail, distorted by grief.

At the beginning, a more classic texture was planned for the snail. As the planning progressed, however, the idea emerged to give it a subtle resemblance to a skull. Elena Rid then stretched the 3D model of the snail so that the spiral at its center would recall the hairstyle of Clarence’s mother. During sculpting, the student worked in fine cracks. Elena mainly used the cloth brush to add further small, swirling details and folds to the surface. Small indentations and a pore-covered structure were also incorporated into the sculpt. Elena primarily based this work on the previously created concept art and additional reference photos of old bones.

To achieve the prehistoric, fossil-like look, Elena engaged intensively with the main character. The snail thus served as a symbol for a very old, deeply buried trauma of Clarence. As references, the student mainly used an ammonite fossil from a museum.

Elena later modelled and textured the snail during the VFX phase. It was not intended as a static prop, but as a manifestation of Clarence’s fears and inner conflict, visually referencing the stuffed snail in his hand. Elena sculpted the primary snail in Blender. Additional snails with varied surfaces and shapes were created with Vanessa Chu. Texturing in Substance Painter, supported by lecturer Birgit Hämmerle, resulted in a photorealistic surface with a fossilised yet “moist” quality.

Elena adjusted lighting intensity and temperature, rendered the snail shell, tracked scenes with Ando Avila in 3D Equalizer, and refined them in a complex Nuke setup.

In several iterations, the exact shape of the “eye” was defined: how strongly it should protrude, in which direction the folds should run, and how the desired effect could best be achieved. In addition to a fold that functioned like the snail’s eye, the inner hole of the snail was also intended to resemble a screaming mouth in a face. In this area, Elena Rid and Jim Obmann worked together on the interior of the snail. Jim created a soft mask in Blender that fades toward the edge of the hole. External light sources were not supposed to influence the interior. In the end, it was meant to appear like a black hole that almost sucks Clarence in.

Texturing in Substance Painter was Elena Rid’s first experience with the software, which initially made it a challenge. We wanted to achieve a moldy look, which the student built up using many layers of moss brushes in different whitish and greenish tones on the base texture. Most of the fine grooves in the snail texture were therefore created in Substance Painter, as the details would otherwise have become too small during modeling. The focus was placed more strongly on a bony, fossilized surface.

Since no greenscreen was used, Martin Tallosy assisted with rotoscoping. Colours, contrasts, and brightness were adjusted to integrate the snail seamlessly into live-action footage. Vanessa Chu, Vanessa Ramovic, and Sonja Latussek assisted with camera tracking. Accurate match moves were essential for positioning the digital camera correctly within the large hall.

Learnigns from Set Supervision

After working on animated films in the first year, we eagerly anticipated shooting on a real film set. Preparation involved understanding the responsibilities of VFX supervision on set, ensuring VFX shots were filmed and documented correctly to avoid post-production issues. Asynchronous supervision courses at CAVE Academy helped us learn LiDAR scanning, photogrammetry, and reference photography.

Once preparations and pre-produced props were complete, the four-day shoot began. Supervisory duties rotated among the team, giving everyone insight into all aspects of the role. Tasks included logging VFX shots, recording focal lengths and camera data, capturing shadows using grey balls, and placing tracking points on greenscreens. Colour checkers ensured colour accuracy and white balance. Two shoot days took place at the Munich location for corridors and reception scenes. The remaining days were spent at the HFF film studio for elevator and living room scenes.

Mentor Jan Stolz provided invaluable support as set supervisor. Cinematographer Torsten Lippstock shot the film on an ARRI Alexa 35. Simon Burger introduced us to the role of the Digital Imaging Technician. Mihail Dervenski guided data management and later edited the film, aligning technical expertise with the director’s vision.

Sound Mixing and Grading

Creating a dark atmosphere was essential. Composer Lukas Stipar, previously involved in WOODLAND, delivered a soundtrack that added weight and intensified tension. Dr. Rodolfo Anes Silveira supervised post-production sound, enhancing clarity and authenticity. A Dolby Atmos mix was created at PHAROS Studio 1, where Tschangis Charokh demonstrated object-based audio placement. Andreas Lautil handled colour grading, giving the film a consistent dark-warm palette.

Conclusion

In retrospect, INFINITY HOTEL was an exciting project for us, from which we drew important personal and professional insights.

For Sonja Latussek, it became clear above all that it is important to define clear areas of responsibility at an early stage. In hindsight, she feels she should have paid closer attention from the outset to the fixed tasks that remained under her responsibility and were primarily related to the film’s visual look, such as the textures of the snail or the elevator. An unexpected challenge for her was greenscreen compositing in Nuke, which proved significantly more complex in some scenes than initially anticipated. Camera tracking, on the other hand, went very well. Sonja learned how tracking works in principle, which points in space are suitable for tracking, when they do not work, and at what point a track becomes truly precise. Although she found all areas of on-set production particularly exciting, she would like to focus more strongly on 2D work in the future. She found the 2D animation of COSMIC KNIGHT very pleasant, as it integrated coherently with the CRT television.

Vanessa Chu mainly emphasises the importance of critically questioning technical statements and not blindly relying on hypothetical possibilities. It became apparent that an ISO setting that was too high on the Alexa camera led to heavy image noise, which meant that tracking points in 3D Equalizer had to be painstakingly corrected by hand. She therefore advocates handling technical parameters such as ISO more sensitively in the future. She also emphasizes the importance of collecting as much data as possible on set and communicating early to the production that time must be scheduled between VFX shots to gather data such as references, measurements, and scans.

Emil Pogolski summarizes his conclusion with a simple but fitting guiding principle: “Make it good, kid.” From his perspective, the production of INFINITY HOTEL proceeded overall without major complications. Planned ideas could be implemented, and post-production was structured, even if it took longer than originally planned.

For Elena Rid, it became particularly clear in retrospect how valuable an even longer and freer concept phase would have been. Elena would have liked to work with more concepts and, above all, to experiment more with the snail. Due to time constraints, this was only possible to a limited extent within the project scope. For future work, the student wants to consciously allow more room for experimentation. At the same time, Elena looks back very positively on the rest of the production process. The team made it through the intensive phase well, and in her view, the scheduling in particular proved to be a major strength of the project.

Vanessa Ramovic believes that most aspects of the production worked very well. Towards the end, she and Emil invested a great deal of time in post-production because the elevator compositing iterations required significant effort. She would also like to develop more concepts in the future and test different lighting moods more intensively. Her personal conclusion is less about technology and more about personal attitude: not losing the joy of the work. For her, making films means expressing something and perhaps even putting a smile on someone’s face. This inner light should not be allowed to fade.

Acknowledgements

What was special about our second year of studies at the University of Television and Film Munich was that our entire cohort worked together on a single project. Without question, this was a true team effort in which all six students contributed their existing knowledge to the film while continuing to develop their skills.

Our special thanks go to our professor Jürgen Schopper, who provided us with strong support in VFX supervision. His vision and creative input helped us, during the weekly classes known as “weeklies”, to push the VFX shots to their final form. Prof. Sinje Gebauer, Dr. Rodolfo Anes Silveira, Berter Orpak, Jonas Kluger, Martin Tallosy and Petra Hereth, who together with Professor Schopper form the chair of the VFX degree programme, supported us throughout the entire year with their expertise across various areas of the VFX pipeline.

Together with Prof. Sinje Gebauer, we ensured that all assets and shots were realised and integrated into the overall flow. INFINITY HOTEL introduced us to working with new VFX tools and to closer collaboration with the screenwriting and production departments at the university. Our screenwriters Michael Schwärzler and Jakob Smolinski inspired us early on with precise story ideas, which we were already able to incorporate creatively into our concept drawings in November 2024. Nevertheless, the further development of the material was a collective exchange, in which we, along with our director and professor Matthias Zentner, contributed ideas and gained insight into the authors’ working processes.

Our producers Sonja Hopf and Konstantin Holzner supported us from the very beginning and guided the production with their extensive expertise. While we, as VFX students, largely operated like a small VFX studio during post-production, we were involved in the film from the outset and gained deep insights into various departments, such as production design and casting.

We would also like to thank our actors Till Raskopf, Jonathan Tittel, Nick Woodland, and Sophie Melbinger, as well as the entire film team, for bringing the fictional characters to life and for creating a strong short film together. After the successful completion of the hotel, we were finally able to present the film to a broad audience and guests from the VFX industry at our premiere as part of the VFX Reels 2025 on 27 November 2025 at the HFF. The film premiered at the VFX-Reels 2025 on 27 November 2025 at HFF Munich.

The Producers’ view

WRITTEN BY SONJA HOPF AND KONSTANTIN HOLZNER

As student producers, our task was to realise a live-action narrative film with a high proportion of visual effects, from development through to festival distribution. Working closely with the VFX and screenwriting students, we entered an entirely new production terrain. One of our key learnings was the necessity of considering VFX shots and technical requirements from the very beginning.

We developed a solid understanding of how previs is created and how it functions, as well as what is required on the production side to make a set truly “VFX-ready”. This included scheduling time buffers for tracking markers and scans and actively coordinating between creative departments and the VFX supervisor. It became clear early on that every shot requires detailed, early planning. Learning to realistically assess how many shots can be achieved in a shooting day, and how VFX-heavy shoot days must be calculated and structured, proved to be a particularly valuable challenge.

The project could only succeed as a collective effort. Coming together early in development allowed us to contribute as creative producers and gain a deeper understanding of both the material and the production challenges. Continuous communication across departments was essential, especially as locations changed, the set expanded, and creative ambitions had to be balanced against available resources. Working with professional heads of department set a high bar and challenged us to meet professional standards, a goal we ultimately achieved, resulting in work we are proud of.

The post Infinity Hotel: Endless Rooms, Endless Renders first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by HFF Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München.

It is kind of a ridiculous idea to make a 3D animated short film all by yourself, particularly if you are a perfectionist and you do not want the result to lean on stylisation as a shortcut. I am Maxim, 25, from Germany. I spent five years creating my animated short film SEN with almost no budget and countless hours of work. This is a rewind of that adventure.

senshortfilm.com | YouTube | Bluesky | LinkedIn

SEN is a 3D animated short film made entirely by one artist. Built with Maya, Houdini, Nuke, and Substance Painter, the project combines procedural VFX, detailed hard-surface modelling, and full compositing in a solo production pipeline.

Where I Started

It was early 2020. Covid was still “that virus over there”, at least from a European perspective. I was studying Media Design at a small university in rural Germany. We were tasked with creating a concept for a creative project and executing it the following semester. I had already made a few student short films and many small 3D projects, so an animated short film was the obvious choice.

I started preproduction around February 2020 with vague ideas. Very early on, it became clear that the main character should be a robot, since I have always enjoyed hard-surface work much more than organic creatures or characters. There is something about rusty metal and subtle surface imperfections that speaks to me, and the challenge of bringing an object to life pushed me to get to work.

First Concepts and Story Iterations

I developed story ideas while concepting the protagonist and environment. The first idea failed and was scrapped quickly. A second storyline centred on the protagonist and made it into the final film, though in altered form: a small mining robot escaping from a mining station it was attached to by cables. That original concept still survives in the final model as the cable stump detail on the robot’s back.

I was still not satisfied with the script. I wrote an entirely new screenplay in which the robot accidentally awakens a huge worm-like cave creature and traps it during a chase. Two months in, I had two robot stories, neither fully convincing.

A breakthrough came from a writing method I had learned in a lecture: asking “what if?” questions. The idea was to allow any thought, no filtering, no judgment, regardless of how implausible it seemed. What if he meets another robot? A mentor figure. What if the mentor is old and rusty? One further “what if?” unlocked the twist. I scrapped the previous storylines and wrote another script, the fourth or fifth by that point. I rewrote it dozens of times based on feedback from friends, my professors, and strangers online.

Rewriting and Planning

While rewriting, I planned the environment and visual logic: the portal design, the planet’s material identity, the crashed spaceship in an icy desert, and how the robot arrived there. Some answers carried over from earlier versions, and others were reworked to fit the new narrative. By mid-2020, the film’s core story and setting had stabilised.

Inspiration: Proof That Solo Is Possible

The new plot increased scope: large environments, distant views, FX, and more animation. I doubted whether I could finish it alone. I found Chris Jones’s blog, who made an animated short film in the early 2000s called “The Passenger”. Reading his production notes was the reality check I needed: if he could do it on early-2000s hardware, I could at least attempt it on modern technology.

Animatic: Solving the Edit Before Final Shots

In parallel with story development, I finished the robot concept, rigged it, and built basic set pieces. Once the script was ready, I created the first animatic. That first version was the hardest because it meant building cameras, scenes, and cuts from a blank slate, knowing none of it would appear in the final render. It felt like throwing time away, but it was necessary.

A total of 13 animatic versions and regular feedback rounds shaped edit and shot layout over the span of about a year, with production starting after the first few months. For an animated project like SEN, much of the final edit is effectively resolved in previz. My last animatic layout and the final edit are almost identical in shot lengths and rough camera positioning.

Discipline: The Real Production Infrastructure

The hardest part of a solo short is not a specific tool or technique. It is continuity. Many people abandon projects of this size, and I came close to doing so more than once. I want to share some tricks that I’ve used to keep myself going.

My favourite strategy is breaking tasks down into steps so small that your brain cannot argue with them. Some mornings my first task was simply “open the software.” Completing that gave a tiny dopamine reward and reduced friction.

Accountability was another tactic, the “sledgehammer method” of motivation: tell EVERYONE you are making the project. If you care about your reputation, you will feel pressure to deliver because people keep asking for progress. This comes with mental health risk, so I would only recommend it once you have fully committed. Routine mattered as well. Habits beat procrastination, and discipline is physical. Exercise kept me under pressure: daily jogging and daily workouts. I overdid it a bit and do not recommend the exact dosage – my knees and back had opinions at 25. Still, it helped.

Similarly, it can also really help to get someone else invested into the project. When Stuart Michael Thomas joined me in 2022 and scored the movie, that was a major motivation boost. No way can I not finish the film now that this amazing professional had spent so much time and effort on making a score for it! Thank you again, Stu!

The Schedule

About one year into the project (January 2021), I wrote a schedule that now reads as slightly unhinged: up at 6, tutorials and books until 9, then work until 9 PM. Weekends free. Later, I shifted to 8 PM plus Saturday hours. This was what it took to make speedy progress, but with additional responsibilities, this pace was not sustainable. There were weeks and months with little progress. During a three-month internship in Hamburg in 2021, I paused the film entirely. Once I started working full-time (late 2022), progress slowed dramatically. Luckily, I had pushed hard the previous years, and SEN was already 60 to 70 per cent complete by then.

Technical Details

Workflow: Iteration and Feedback as a System

One key lesson: everything starts out looking bad until you iterate enough. Finding things wrong with an asset, shot or edit, then figuring out how to improve it is the main creative challenge. After that, execution just comes down to time plus technical knowledge.

Feedback was critical. Every time a piece reached a somewhat presentable state, I would collect notes from professors, friends, family, and online communities. Feedback improved the film and taught me why certain choices worked or did not.

I want to give a big shout-out to Melanie Beisswenger here, who was my professor when I started the project. She also became my bachelor’s thesis critic, and even after graduation, she continued to give valuable notes and feedback. Another big shoutout goes to Nikolai Neumetzler, another brave soul who joined to judge my bachelor’s thesis and also stuck around to give feedback afterwards. Also, he even animated one of the shots! Thank you, Melanie and Nik, for your contributions to the project!

Assets: Building a World That Holds Up in Closeups

Asset building was a comfortable area for me. I had experience from university projects, building most assets myself, so modelling, texturing, and shading were familiar territory. The two characters remained informally named “robot” and “rusty”. Environment assets followed. Everything went through multiple iterations across months or years. Some assets were hand-modelled, others sculpted, and some kitbashed.

Only a few assets were purchased online: lava rocks for the first shot background, a large cliff dividing the environment (internally called “DivHill”), and base geometry for the wreckage.

The wreckage relied heavily on procedural shaders, but I extracted the large surfaces, created quick UVs, and painted custom textures in Substance Painter. Photogrammetry scans also entered the pipeline. Snow clumps were based on scans I made in 2020 by spraying water on flour and clumping it.

Scene assembly strategy

Assets were loaded into shots as referenced Maya files. Most were placed in world space so they arrived in correct relative positions. I was not consistent with this rule, and the assets that did not follow it created extra “fun” in transform matching.

The crater asset rework

The crater went through major redevelopment. The first version used a complex procedural shader, leading to slow renders without holding up in close-ups. Later, I rebuilt it using tiling textures blended via hand-painted masks. Displacement remained complex but delivered good base detail. For close-ups, it was still not enough. I created mud clump assets from rock models found online, resculpted them in ZBrush to read as mud, textured them in Substance Painter, and then manually placed them to enhance detail and hide underlying weaknesses.

Placement was tricky because edges could break the illusion of a continuous surface. A lot more of those mudclumps were later added per-shot in the lighting stage. SEN ended up with 10 major assets, 5 minor assets (including snow and mud clumps) and roughly 87 million triangles across assets combined (excluding certain FX caches treated as assets)

Rigging: A Referenced Maya System for Swappable Geometry

Rigging is not my strongest suit, so it took time to arrive at a reliable setup for the characters. I started with the robot while developing the script and animatics, again following an iterative approach. Both the robot and Rusty rigs were based on Maya referencing, using two geometry workfiles per character: a low-resolution proxy for animatic, animation, and previews, and a high-resolution version with shaders and final detail.

The low-res and high-res files mirrored naming exactly, meaning any object in low-res existed in high-res under the same name. There was no hierarchy in the geometry files, with all geometry sitting at the root level of the outliner. The rig workfile referenced the low-res geometry and then created the hierarchy and control groups that the rig moved. Because naming matched, the low-res geometry could be swapped for high-res cleanly. Choosing robots avoided organic deformation, skin weighting, and the related rig complexity.

The robot rig took roughly six months to be fully rigged, although usable versions existed much earlier for animatic work. The biggest technical challenge was wheel rotation driven by translation. This breaks when the character turns 180 degrees, as wheels begin spinning backwards.

World Vectors to the rescue!

The solution was a world-vector wheel rig setup found via a tutorial after considerable time trying to solve it independently. The system compares the previous and current frame’s world-space positions and adjusts the wheel rotation based on the delta. The arms are driven by an IK setup, while all remaining controls operate in FK. The wheels include a suspension setup that drives the spring, damper, and gear rotations at the correct ratios and reacts inversely when the body banks.

For ground interaction, I considered constraining the wheels to the surface but ultimately chose to animate wheel height manually across all shots to retain control. In many cases, managing the amount of ground intersection was important for later FX work. For Rusty, large parts of the robot rig could be duplicated and adjusted rather than rebuilt from scratch.

How SEN Got a Professional Score

In mid-November 2020, after months of animatic iterations, I began planning the music. The film has no dialogue, so the score carries a large share of the narrative load. I posted on r/composer with the title “Looking for Shortfilm Score (Paid)”, offering $100 as a starting point for negotiation and sharing the animatic along with work-in-progress assets.

Stuart Michael Thomas, a professional composer, got in touch and offered to score the film on the condition that the money be donated to a charity instead. He worked on major studio franchises such as Iron Man, Avengers, and Fast & Furious. His involvement was creatively transformative and kept me motivated through the later stages of production.

Animation Process: Blocking to Spline Without Losing Your Mind

For me, animation is fun for about two weeks. After that, it becomes repetitive. Fortunately for me, there was a boatload of other tasks on my to-do list, so for most shot,s I could allow myself to take breaks from animating every few weeks and do other tasks. The general approach was consistent across shots:

• Set up the scene.
• Load the rig.
• Load or build low-res proxy environment geometry.
• Import camera from previz and optionally import robot from animatic as reference.
• Create a blocking pass.

Pose-first blocking

I often lay out key poses on single frames first to avoid having to deal with curve tangents immediately. I would stack the key poses in the first 10 frames of the shot, with keys on all controls, even if a control did not move. On a typical shot, I spent half a week refining poses, then spaced them out for timing and added in-between poses. Feedback cycles followed. I stayed in blocking because big changes are easiest there. Late in blocking, I retimed sections aggressively and began refining body parts independently. All of these blocking passes were done without any interpolations. This allowed me to craft strong key poses and lay a solid foundation.

The spline crash phase

When I finally splined, the shot entered the “crappy phase”. No matter how solid the blocking looked, the first spline pass always felt like rediscovering animation curves for the first time. The shot that previously held together suddenly looked broken, and the amount of work ahead became unclear. To stay sane during splining, I refined shots in 20- to 80-frame chunks, polishing one section at a time before moving on. This workflow repeated across all 11 shots.

Lighting: Making Snow Read and Renders Happen

Once motion worked, I moved into lighting, which had its own technical friction. Lighting robots differs from lighting faces, and classic portrait lighting rules apply differently. Doing lighting in Maya was also challenging for morale. Today I would likely light in Houdini, but switching mid-project was not feasible.

Early on, I created a “master light rig” – basically just a Maya file with a Skydome, directional Sunlight and an area light to fill in shadows. This was the starting point for all shots. I always made adjustments to these lights and added further shot-specific ones.

The snow problem and the cloud shadow solution

Snow is tricky. In photos, it often becomes a blown-out flat white field unless shadows create form. Shot 5, the exposition crater shot, forced the learning: cloud shadows. I created large grid meshes and drove opacity with noise textures to simulate clouds, then manually positioned them to cast landscape shadows.

These cloud shadows also make a landscape feel larger. But Iteration still ruled: light-by-light adjustments repeated until the shot held together, or Maya crashed and erased progress. Subsurface Scattering was used a lot for all the snow and some plastic parts of the robot, but the heaviest passes were probably the volumetric FX elements in the crater.

Batch rendering automation

A key productivity tool was a Python script I wrote to generate and execute .bat files using Maya’s batch render command. In a display of unjustified ambition, I christened it “Renderfarm.py”. It also allowed me to limit render threads, so I could keep working while renders ran. Sometimes, renders ran in the background while I played games with friends, and I complained about frame rates as if it were anyone else’s fault.

FX: Houdini-First, With Strategic Cheats

FX is my favourite part of the pipeline: technical, varied, and rewarding. The story allowed for a lot of FX work, which was at least part of the reason for my excitement.
SEN includes smoke, snow and mud trails, snowfall, water droplets, ash, portal FX, stylized portal travel FX, and a timelapse decay effect for rusting metal. I started some FX in Maya (snowfall and ash from wreckage) but moved most FX to Houdini, which I had begun learning in early 2020. The film’s icicles were among my first Houdini projects, built as a procedural generator.

Smoke pipeline

The fire in the wreckage was faked using flicker-animated area lights and 2D elements in comp, while smoke was simulated in Houdini and exported as VDB sequences for rendering in Maya. The film uses two smoke passes: an older simulation visible in the wide crater introduction in shot 5, and a re-simulated version created in 2024 for the closer crater shots.

Portal FX construction

I wrote a creative description of the portal effect before implementation to define visual intent. I built two circular volumetric base elements by emitting particles from a sphere in one direction and giving them a 10-second lifespan to form a line. Then, bending the line into a circle, and emitting smoke from particles, once before and once after bending.

From these two bases, I created 15 elements total. Many were particle-based and relied on geometry-based SOP operations to bend or deform finished simulations. Some layers used advection by the base volumes.
The main plasma effect consisted of: Two circular particle elements, a third supporting particle element and finally a geometric particle layer resembling a UI, discovered through experimentation. Activation-specific elements included lightning strikes made in Maya using a rigged curve, plus two Houdini activation particle elements.

Environment interaction passes included two particle elements, four volumetric elements and two volumetric elements converted to polygons for heat distortion in compositing. I documented these FX in detail for my bachelor’s thesis, but that exceeds the scope here.

Compositing: AOV-Driven Look Development in Nuke

I broke renders down into multiple layers, which allowed selective re-renders of only parts of a shot. This was crucial without access to a dedicated render farm. Each layer included a full set of AOVs such as diffuse, specular, SSS, and others, enabling extensive look development in Nuke. I did not separate lights into light categories, as I did not yet know how to combine material channels and light categories in a single setup. As a result, lighting had to be locked before final rendering. Whenever possible, I fixed issues in comp to avoid re-rendering. Some of these workarounds made the Nuke scripts heavy and unstable, with crashes that occasionally halted progress.

How SEN Got Me to London

In 2022, living in Hamburg, I finished my bachelor’s degree, using the main shot of the film as the practical component. I was now officially finished with studying and ready to join the scary, exciting world of being a professional artist. With a reel largely built from SEN shots, I applied to multiple places, including Framestore’s Launchpad internship. I assumed I was not ready. To my surprise, I was invited to three online interviews.

Framestore struggled to place me because true generalism is rare, and it didn’t help that I was not certain what my strongest skill was. The interviews went well, then silence, then the email that changed everything: not an internship, but an offer for a Junior Generalist position. SEN had made an impression.
I moved to London, where I work at Framestore to this day (currently in my fourth year). Being flexible as a generalist helped to get some stability during strikes and broader industry turbulence, though my main focus continues to be FX work.

Reworks: Outgrowing Your Own Past Work

Long projects create a problem: you improve faster than your older shots. In 2021, I was proud of the teaser shots. By 2023, as an entry-level professional, those shots looked weak. That added rework load on top of new shots. Reworks included improved lighting, additional FX sims, environment cleanup, and better composition. Everything required re-rendering, pushing my PC hard for months. Flat-rate electricity helped me and devastated y landlord. The most reworked element was the crater asset, originally built in autumn 2020 and later rebuilt multiple times.

The main shot was also reworked. It was finalised in early 2022 due to time constraints on the bachelor’s thesis, which forced shortcuts and messy scripts. Revisiting it in 2024 required cleanup before progress could be made. Reminder: work as clean as time allows, because you may return years later.

Sound FX: Handing Off to Company3 Connections

Sound FX was unfamiliar territory. I built temporary SFX for teasers, but wanted professional work for the final film. Colleagues at Framestore connected me to people at Company3, a Framestore subsidiary focused on post-production. I allocated a roughly 1k budget, and they produced sound FX. Being on the client side was stressful because I had to give notes outside my expertise, but the team was strong, and I trusted them. They delivered an Atmos mix. I hope I implemented it correctly and did not break it in the edit…

Cut Content: What Did Not Make It

Several planned elements were cut to keep the film readable and the workload under control. Heavy snowfall across the entire film was reduced, as dense snowflakes would have obscured the environments and significantly complicated compositing due to overlap with smoke, ash, and portal effects. Light snowfall remains in the early shots, while the crater sequences use none.

A half-frozen waterfall never progressed beyond concept and RnD. It added visual complexity without contributing to the story, so further work on it was dropped. A Maya nParticle setup for snow landing on the robot and melting into droplets came close to working, then collapsed under technical instability and was cut as well. While this could likely have been rebuilt later in Houdini, doing so would have required additional renders and strict continuity tracking across shots, making it impractical at that stage.

Release: From Festival Run to Online Premiere

Over the course of 2025, SEN screened at six festivals. It did not win any awards, but that was never the objective. The goal was to find out whether I could complete a project of this scale, enjoy the process, and possibly inspire others to start their own long-form personal projects. Anything beyond that was a bonus.

At the time of writing, I am preparing the online release. Marketing an online release is real work and easily the least enjoyable part of making a film: tailoring formats for different platforms, writing captions, and optimising for reach. Chatbots help with hashtags and surface-level optimisation, but they do not solve questions of taste or authenticity. Feedback from festival screenings was consistently positive, and it will be interesting to see how the film is received online. The public release link is here: Have a look on Youtube

Alongside this, Melanie Beisswenger suggested telling the story of the little robot further in the Digital Production, which means the article you are reading right now.

Will I Do Another One?

People have asked me about sequels or another animated short. Currently, there are no plans for further animation projects, since I want to try my hand at live action next. I miss having a personal project, but the next one will not be solo.

Should You Make a Film by Yourself? Is University Worth It?

If you are passionate, you should pursue it. The work requires time, dedication, discipline, and craft. You will not enjoy it if you do not love the process, but if you do, it can give your work direction and meaning.

University is a double-edged sword. It can be valuable for networking, structure, and protected time to learn, especially when supported by loans or grants. In Germany, student support can reduce financial pressure compared to other countries. You could learn everything online if you are disciplined and organised. My degree was in Media Design, a broad programme covering many aspects of media. It teaches fundamentals, but personal projects remain essential for building a portfolio. Do not expect to follow a curriculum and receive job offers automatically. A bachelor’s degree can help with visas and legal frameworks, but in media industry hiring, it carries limited weight. In practice, skills matter more than formal qualifications.

During university, I steered projects toward 3D and VFX whenever possible and reduced effort on areas less relevant to my goals, such as print. Making a solo film strengthened my generalist skills, at the cost of deeper specialisation. Demand for generalists may grow, but that is hard to predict. Generalists can be difficult to position, as their value is not always immediately obvious, but they often act as the connective tissue that holds projects together.

SEN taught me that passion projects are possible if you love the process. Make something awesome.

The post How I Spent Five Years Making a Solo 3D Film first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Devices like the Game Boy rarely get the treatment they deserve: tears, hugs, and apparently, quad-based 3D modeling. Digital artist Julio Benavides—aka Benavidmark—has turned the iconic handheld into a stylized robot, blending 8-bit nostalgia with technical precision. This isn’t just an emotional tribute; it’s a detailed showcase of a clean, production-grade pipeline—suitable for animation, 3D printing, or simply staring at and wishing for your childhood back.

Concept and Reference: Pureref to the Rescue

Benavidmark’s process started, as many do, with references. The artist’s method of choice: Pureref—a reference management tool favored for juggling large piles of inspiration. Images forming the visual backbone of the project are clearly visible in the background, testifying to a production process rooted in visual research, not fever dreams.

On concept art duties: Cameron Sewell, a freelance illustrator based in Florida. Sewell’s clear, detailed style informed both the spirit and design of the project, aiming for animation- and game-industry relevance.

Blocking: Camera Matching with fSpy and Blender

For scene blocking, Benavidmark employed fSpy, a piece of open-source software designed for matching camera positions and perspectives from photographic reference. The workflow is methodical: load a still image, match the camera parameters, export those to Blender (version 4.2 in this case), then adjust the camera and background for blocking.

Blender’s fSpy importer add-on automates most of this, importing camera parameters directly and simplifying the setup. With the image in place, Benavidmark moved on to blocking out the character, ready for the actual modeling.

Modeling in Autodesk Maya: Quads, Not Triangles

The modeling phase occurred in Autodesk Maya, a platform not exactly lacking in polygon options. Here, the watchword is “quads”: polygons with four sides, essential for clean edge flow, predictable deformation, and subdivision in animation and VFX pipelines.

Benavidmark’s approach is textbook: begin with a rough blockout, define major shapes, then add details—all while maintaining quad-only topology wherever possible. Separate components were modeled individually, then assembled with an obsessive focus on all-quad geometry. This isn’t just purism; triangles are prone to causing pinching and artifacts during subdivision or deformation, a headache familiar to anyone who’s ever tried to animate a mesh built from triangles.

Quads allow for easier editing, smoother deformations, and subdivision with algorithms like Catmull-Clark. Triangles, by contrast, are reserved for low-poly, real-time, or background assets where subdivisions are unnecessary.

UVs: The Blueprint for Texture

Once the geometry was ready, Benavidmark generated UVs—the essential mapping from 3D to 2D for texturing. Accurate UVs allow textures, colors, and details to be applied cleanly and without distortion. A checker material in Maya verified that the layout was free from unwanted stretching before proceeding.

Texturing: Illustrator Alphas, Substance Painter Layers

Texturing was completed in Substance Painter, but not before creating high-resolution alpha masks in Adobe Illustrator. These alphas provided the fine details required for accurate, high-res detail placement on the model.

With the model and UVs imported into Substance Painter, the workflow followed a familiar sequence: apply a UV checker, lay down the base color, layer on custom alphas, then finish with carefully constructed dirt and wear layers. The result is a stylized surface with a convincing illusion of depth, use, and history—just like the real Game Boy after a few years in a school backpack.

Final Scene: Rendering in Blender 4.1

For final renders, the model returned to Blender (version 4.1). Materials and high-res textures were assigned, HDRI lighting was introduced for realistic reflections and highlights, and the scene was composed in a manner that leaves everything organized and ready for further revision.

The Whole 3D Pipeline on Display

Benavidmark’s project is a classic hard-surface pipeline: visual research, camera matching, quad-based modeling, UV mapping, layered texturing, and final rendering. Each step is documented, every tool named, and the logic behind every production choice is explained. Professionals looking to audit, learn, or simply critique every polygon will find all the necessary evidence.

Availability and Further Details

The complete Game Boy Robot scene is available for download and study on Gumroad. Extended breakdowns, high-res renders, and additional assets can be found on ArtStation, with an even deeper dive into the process on the project website. If you want to see it all in motion, check out the YouTube channel.

And to see, what he is up to in the meantime, check his Instagram: instagram.com/benavidmark

The post Game Boy Robot: When Nostalgia Gets a Quad-Based Makeover first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The Survivor is a sci-fi-inspired project depicting the story of a crashed pilot who, despite sustaining injuries, has survived. She stands before her burning, shattered jet, gazing into the sunset—a symbol of hope.

The goal was to develop a convincing character within two months, conveying strong emotions and narrative depth through both modeling and texturing. This project was a collaboration between Paul Zielske (Modeling) and Julian Frank (Texturing, Look Development), serving as part of their graduation thesis at PIXLVISN Media Arts Academy.

Modeling with ZBrush

The character was modeled by Paul Zielske using ZBrush. He placed particular emphasis on expressive and anatomically believable representation, focusing on facial structure, expressions, and skin folds to support the character’s emotional story. The character emerged from a combination of various concept ideas, which were jointly developed and refined. Paul successfully translated this template into a convincing 3D model.

Texturing and Look Development

Julian Frank was responsible for the entire texturing, look development, and all subsequent steps up to the final rendering. The focus was on telling a believable story through the character’s surface using details, materials, and visual mood. For this project, they deliberately chose to develop only the upper body of the figure. This allowed for a more intensive focus on details in modeling, textures, and expression to achieve a particularly high-quality representation.

The Role of References

Since there was no fixed concept art for the look and feel of the character, the team developed the character entirely based on various references. This approach involved some risk but also provided the creative freedom to develop an independent figure.

In this project, Julian focused on a variety of different surfaces: damaged, glossy carbon, peeling paint on metal, decals, realistic skin with blemishes, second-degree burns, as well as heavy, coarse fabrics. The goal was to showcase the full range of materiality and to tackle various challenges deliberately.

At the beginning, a large collection of references was built to understand the characteristic features of these materials—from color schemes to light behavior to microdetails on the surface. Julian believes that by closely analyzing one’s own references, one develops a better sense for aspects like color, contrast, composition, and material effect. This research process significantly influenced the visual style of the project.

Pipeline and Workflow

As previously mentioned, the project began with an intensive research phase. The team first searched for reference material, both for the character itself and for the general look and feel of the scene. Once this was completed, Paul began modeling in ZBrush. In parallel, Julian created a reference library, specifically focusing on materials, texturing, and the storytelling of the figure.

After the model was completed, Julian handled the remaining aspects of the pipeline: starting with layout and blockout in Maya 2024, texturing in Mari 7.1v2 , look development in Arnold, the lighting setup, and finally, the final composition.

Texturing with Mari and Substance Painter

Although other tools like Substance Painter were considered, they presented limitations when working with large UDIM workflows. Substance is efficient in game and real-time contexts, but it often struggles with performance and memory usage when dealing with dozens of high-resolution tiles. Navigation becomes sluggish, and asset management across many UDIMs can be inefficient.

Mari, on the other hand, is built for heavy, film-quality assets. It supports large UDIM sets natively and efficiently, allowing Julian seamless painting across multiple tiles—even at 4K or 8K—without significant performance loss. This made it particularly well-suited for the level of detail required in this project.

In addition, Mari’s non-destructive, layer-based system offers deep control over masks, channels, and procedural effects. Its support for advanced shaders, industry-standard color workflows like OCIO, and easy integration with tools such as Houdini, Katana, or Nuke makes it a robust solution in high-end production pipelines.

At the same time, Julian used substance painter strategically to generate smart masks quickly and efficiently. Three masks were packed into the R, G, and B channels of a base color map, which was then imported into Mari as a paint node. Using the Split RGB function, each mask was extracted and used as a separate alpha, allowing precise material control and adjustments without overloading the scene. This hybrid approach preserved Mari’s performance while benefiting from Substance’s speed and intuitive mask creation, combining the best of both tools.

Texturing Workflow

The texturing workflow in Mari began with a basic blockout based on triplanar projections and tileable maps. Building upon this, materials were clearly separated, and layers for dirt, dust, and damage were added. Details were then painted and projected.

It was important to mentally place oneself in the character’s situation. Where could scratches, wounds, or chipping realistically occur due to a plane crash? Where might the character have hit her head, and what would that mean for the material and surface?

The process started with the base color, which received the most attention. Throughout the process, references were constantly consulted to replicate damage, dirt, and material irregularities as credibly as possible. A particular focus was on clearly separating the different materials (such as individual layers of metal, carbon, paint, wear, and dirt). This was not only helpful for maintaining an overview but also enabled the creation of precise RGB masks for look development. These masks later provided more flexibility in shading and allowed targeted adjustments to individual material groups. This workflow was used to work through the secondary layers, such as roughness, specular weight, coat, bump, displacement, etc. This gave the character more life, realism, and depth.

During the texturing process, regular switches between Maya and Mari were made. In Arnold, the shader setup was built, and turntables were rendered to specifically adjust the values of the maps and achieve the best possible result.

Challenges and Storytelling

The biggest self-imposed challenge was creating a realistic skin texture with blemishes and second-degree burns. Although Julian had previously worked on various skin textures and CG doubles, implementing a face with wounds, skin imperfections, and simultaneous grooming was both exciting and demanding.

Balancing the facial areas was particularly challenging. Since the burn on the left side was very dominant, additional details had to be integrated on the right side to create visual balance. This included stress marks and dirt. Additionally, hair was deliberately removed on the left side to credibly represent the burned area.

For more control in the shader, secondary maps, layered displacement maps, and RGB area masks were also used. This ensured that the textures functioned as planned and allowed for more flexible work. Storytelling played a central role—every scar, every dirt mark was intended not only to be visually convincing but also to convey something about the character’s fate and experience.

Lighting Implementation

Since the project was carried out by only two people, a deliberately simple environment was chosen. The lighting mood was strongly influenced by the story-based scene: the pilot is illuminated from the left side (where her burning, crashed plane is located). To achieve this effect, an animated fire was used as a gobo light source—simple and effective. The character gazes into the distance of the landscape, with the focus on the helmet, face, and expression.

Additionally, a key light and a fill light were used to emphasize important details and ensure the character’s readability. A suitable HDRI provided soft, natural illumination of the entire scene.

For each light, AOVs were rendered separately. This allowed full control over the lighting mood in Nuke and in the “back-to-beauty (b2b)” process, enabling targeted adjustments in post-production. The lighting setup was overall simple but functional, which was precisely the goal: to create atmosphere without overloading.

It is recommended to render essential AOVs (ideally AOVs per light). This provides maximum flexibility and artistic freedom in post-production.

Reflections and Learnings

In hindsight, the lighting and perhaps the environment might have been adjusted further. After rendering the final sequence, additional look development still frames were created in a forest environment to showcase texturing and look development separately. It was noticed that the character appeared somewhat more realistic and atmospheric there.

However, due to a clear schedule in the pipeline and a fixed deadline, a complete change of the lighting setup was not possible at that point. Nevertheless, satisfaction with the result was achieved, and that’s what ultimately matters.

Overall, Paul and Julian had a very structured approach from start to finish: numerous meetings, clear task distribution, and joint planning of all steps. The decision to focus on the upper half of the character and deliver 100% quality proved to be absolutely worthwhile. Joint brainstorming, regular mutual reviews, and constant exchange greatly strengthened their teamwork. This also ensured a smooth technical pipeline.

Future Plans

The Survivor is completed, and everybody was happy with the result. Personal projects are definitely already in planning. There is a desire to continue working on strong characters and atmospheric scenes, with great attention to detail and a good sense of atmosphere. There are certainly enough ideas!

Contact Information

If you have any questions or are interested in a creative exchange, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn and say hello. Paul Zielske here on LinkedIn, ArtStation, and The Rookies and Julian Frank here on LinkedIn, ArtStation, and The Rookies under their respective names. They always welcome feedback, project-related discussions, or new contacts from the industry!

The post The Survivor: A Study in Character-Driven Look Development first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.